292 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
group with me. After a good while watching and peering over- 
head in search of the owner of this strange voice, whom I could 
not see, but whose talking I could hear, the bird flew off, but 
only to throw itself on the trunk of an adjacent pine. I secured 
it at once, and saw for the first time ‘‘in the flesh” a specimen of 
Picus hyperythrus, undoubtedly a rare bird, at least in this part 
of the hills. I subsequently got three more examples of it at long 
intervals. It is a handsome species, of medium size, and the 
coloration is unique among Indian Woodpeckers, being uniformly 
pale chestnut or bay-red below; the upper parts black, with 
white bars, like many others of its kindred. The male has the 
head fine crimson, and the female black, with pale streaks. This 
specimen was a male. Its particular note is hard to describe. 
Most of the tribe have a harsh rattling cry, usually uttered on the 
wing, or when about to alight or throw themselves on the tree- 
trunk they have selected. My bird’s voice was of two notes, on 
an ascending scale and oft repeated, and void of the harshness 
characteristic of the cry of the green species or of its kindred 
with the black and white upper plumage. I observe that the 
learned have victimised this bird as the type of a new genus, 
“ Hypopicus,” for the same reason (?), good lack! that they have 
multiplied the genera of Spotted Woodpeckers into Yungipicus, 
Leiopicus, and so on. Is there any structural difference in this 
bird warranting its generic isolation beyond the somewhat slender 
bill? I once possessed specimens of eighteen distinct species of 
Woodpecker from Upper India and the Himalayas, and on 
referring to “the authorities” I find them allotted to thirteen 
distinct genera. This exasperating manufacture of genera is 
even worse in some other groups I could name. 
My shot disturbed some large Wood Pigeons, which turned 
out to be the beautiful Columba Hodgsonii; they were very wild, 
but I secured a brace with green cartridges after some fatiguing 
stalking, and many more specimens on future occasions fell to 
my gun. The hill Shikarees constantly bring them in with other 
Pigeons, &c., for sale, and it was thus I secured my first indifferent 
specimens the year before at Kussowlie. The Himalayan Cushat 
(if it be distinct from the British bird) is found only in the N.W. 
Himalayas, where I have seen it in flocks on the gleaned harvest 
terraces below Kussowlie in autumn; and a Blue Pigeon, supposed 
to differ from the comnion kind abounding on the plains and named 
